Working the 80/20 Principle!

I made an info graphic… a visual guide!

So, if you want to supercharge your productivity and get your relationship priorities sorted, all quick-like…

work Perato’s Principle.

It’s simpler than you think and could save you dozens of hours and hassles per week.

80/20 principle

Make sense? If so, tell me what you think or embed it at your website, if you’d like!

The Prowess Wheel – Visual Guide

At the Buffer Blog one of my favorite writers there Belle Beth Cooper posted an article called

The Secret to Creativity, Intelligence, and Scientific Thinking: Being Able to Make Connections.

She included a cool graphic (adapted from a creation by Hugh MacLeod, see below) that gave a keen picture of the difference between knowledge and experience. (Cooper inserted knowledge in place of MacLeod’s information and experience in place of knowledge, in her version.)

hughmacleon
By Hugh MacLeon
(Adaptation of original by Hugh MacLeod's work, by Belle Beth Cooper)
(Belle Beth Cooper’s adaptation of original work by Hugh MacLeod’s.)

 

COOPER’S SUMMARY:
• Experience works like rods–connecting the dots that are the bits of knowledge we gain. Don’t you love it, too?

That means, people who are good at connecting (knowledge bits) dots are creative types.

Creativity, then, is not the stuff of genius, it’s the stuff of connection.

It got me to thinking and using my creativity, thus defined as “connecting dots”.

 

It’s like my brain had a baby. Here’s what I created to go a step further than Hugh and Belle Beth:

Tell me if it makes sense.

I’ll call it THE PROWESS WHEEL

The Prowess Wheel

Skills are knobby tires for the wheel. Traction, baby!

You can embed the graphic by copying the code below, if you’d like. I’m happy to share.

More great things are coming, want in? Please sign up for direct email delivery through Feedburner in the sidebar!

-Lisa

Supercharge Your Message with these 3 Secret Powers

kindness

 

Robert was a guy who wanted something. You could tell.

He wanted what a lot of people want. He wanted his idea out there. He wanted to get noticed and get recognized and make a better living. As an accomplished amateur guitarist he loved music and created a service focused at musicians. But, he couldn’t seem to get much traction.

After looking at his business and his marketing efforts I noticed something.
It was just below the surface but it tainted just about every Robert did.

Stinginess.

I didn’t come right out and tell him this, “Hey, friend, you’re stingy. People hate that. It’s like client repellant.” But, I did ask him a few questions and he stumbled onto the conclusion himself.

They were these 2 transformative questions:

1. What are your doing out of pure kindness to your target group?
(What are doing to simply serve this group, without hoping for or gunning for something in return?)

2. Are you empathizing fully with your group and their needs?
( What are their biggest needs and how does that make you want to respond? What will you do about it?)

A big shift happened. A light in a dark room moment.
(That’s what I LOVE about good questions. They shift things.)

It was like a wall broke down for him. He started thinking. Really thinking. Then he starting looking through a new window (perspective & worldview). New options and possibilities came into view. Discouragement vanished.

Instead of being centered on scarcity and never having enough (money, clients, opportunities, options), Robert started remembering how much good he could do.

Doing good felt good. Soon, it actually made him a better person for it. This new spirit didn’t extend to just clients, but his friends and family benefitted as well.

The new generosity of spirit made all the difference.

His empathy supercharged his efforts.

His message got out better this way.

Here’s what happened:
He started offering some of his services for free, no strings attached. This was valuable. Several musicians caught on and passed along his information. One of those leads provided consistent income almost right away. Then he reached out to a few local non profit groups and gave them some great work for free. They gave him some positive public testimonials and a few direct referrals. (He wasn’t helping them so they could help him in return, but after he gave of himself so generously, they wanted to help him out.)

His old message came off like this: “I have something and you need it. You should want this.” 

Result? Dead ends and closed spirits.

His new message consisted of actions that worked like a megaphone. They said, “I’ll come along side you. Everything will be fine. I got this. No worries.”

People started searching him out. He didn’t have to work as hard to be noticed because his actions were secret super powers.

• Empathy

• Kindness

• Generosity

It drew plenty of attention. The right kind of attention. People were happy to pay him because they saw more value in his service. The stingy people that didn’t want to fork over any money for the value he brought them faded into the background. The more he invested and gave to the 80-90% of the folks that valued him, the better things got.

CONCLUSION:

Remember your Secret Super Powers.

If you’ve hit a wall with a project there’s a simple fix: If promotion, marketing, exposure, or getting your message out has stalled in any way, revisit your levels of 1. empathy, 2. no-strings-attached-kindness, and 3. generosity.

Reinstitute a lot of that back into your efforts, let go of the wheel, and see what happens. These secret super powers only work best if you put your true heart into it and live it out fully.

They are fertile things that birth the same spirit and goodness back to you.

Now some questions for you…

What message are you trying to get out right now?

(A project, a book, an album, a class, a service, a product, etc.)

What’s a way you can be more empathic and generous?
(In that spirit, let this be your first bit of exposure. You can share that here, if you’d like.)

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Thanks for visiting and thanks for being awesome.

-L

Faith = a Basket of Eggs: In Tribute to David A. Dorsey

eggs

 

So, a dear man died one week ago. Dave, to his students (because he preferred this), and Dr David Dorsey, PhD officially. On Tuesday the chapel was packed for his funeral as hundreds resolutely braved sub zero wind chill to pay respects, support his family, share memories and express their sadness at the loss. For us who remain in this world and knew him the hole of his absence hurts. It actually feels painful.

 

dorsey

 

If I tried to tell you all the things that I loved about my former Old Testament Professor, or the countless benefits to me, or the simple and genuine ways he loved on me and others, I would be typing for days. Suffice it to say just about everyone on Tuesday was in tears and everyone felt the weight of the loss as we remembered his light in this world.

In the next few weeks I hope to share some of the insights I gleaned from this amazing scholar and human being.

For now, I’ll share with you something Dave taught us about faith. Granted, I won’t do it justice; and if you read this and heard differently from him, please add your own amend in the comments section.

So, here goes…
He said the faith of the patriarchs of Israel might not be the kind of faith we suppose it is. Hebrews 11 gives us a “Hall of Fame” of the faithful. We may think that these people trusted and relied on God. They did. But we get the pedigree of it all wrong. The practice of faith is much richer than we might suppose, especially at first glance reading the list of the faithful.

Instead, it’s something like this:

Faith is not about being hopeful about what lies beyond the bend in the future. It not really about a “blind” ascension to trust either. Those are good and important in their ways, but when we speak of the life of faith in terms of the Old Testament faithful, like Abraham leaving everything he knew for the wilderness for instance, we are really talking about a concept much like “putting all your eggs in one basket.”

That’s how Dave put it. The word picture stuck and it stuck good.

With the Life of Faith…
You are deeming God good, trustworthy, and loving and then you put it all on the line.

(So, it’s rarer than you think!)

You stop hedging your bets. You stop saving a little security for yourself. You stop holding something back that gives you a sense of control. You bet the whole thing. You leave nothing back. You. go. in. wholly.

Sometimes, I find eggs in my pockets, or around the house, or in places that I didn’t know they were, like a weird easter egg hunt. Not chicken eggs, of course, but the eggs of my worries. I may have thought I handed the basket over, and perhaps I really did, but life can make you lay a few eggs. Sometimes people throw them at you too.

 

 

Faith, Hope, Love. Those are what remain, yes?

Faith = a Basket of Eggs.

It’s a shocking level of vulnerability: the life of faith.

You can tell when you do it too. You get a mixture of feelings. Great relief that your job is over, your poor skills are not needed any longer, and someone more capable is now responsible and in charge. Whew! Then, you may get a twinge of terror at the power you gave up, but probably never really had anyway. You become all at once very hopeful and very dependent. It’s precarious.

There’s a rare beauty to it.

Sometimes we give up our baskets and sometimes they sort of get pried out of our hands.

Dave was gravely ill for over 3 decades. His was a life of faith. It had to be. And he handed over eggs.

It was a wrestle match, he would tell you. He didn’t always feel faithful. He made mistakes. His candor was humbling. But, through his honesty he became faithful all the more.

There’s something about growing to trust God for each breath, and believing that God revealed himself as a thoroughly good and gracious and generous Creator and Sustainer in the passages of the Old Testament that transformed this brilliant man into a true saint. Not sappy, but real. All at once very strong and stable and yet achingly weak.

Dave was not self-righteous but gracious. Not arrogant in any discernible manner, but loving and open to others. Concerned with others and their lives and largely uncomplaining. Free with his humor and goodwill.

Hear this: You don’t get the privilege to meet people like this very often. You don’t get to be a person like this often. It’s takes an amazing about of formation, re-formation, and transformation. It doesn’t happen by accident or by genetics.

A life of faith means that you hold nothing back. See the difference?

It’s not using power to feel better. It’s giving it over to be fully won over.

 

In a life of faith you love whole-heartedly. Not because it’s safe. It never is. But, because it is good. A life of faith means that you have a sharp, ongoing sense of your own weaknesses and dependence, and that goes overflowing into compassion for yourself and others.

A few days after Dave’s death I was praying in the car out loud as I do sometimes. (I take more comfort in doing this now. People talk on the phone hands-free all the time in their cars and look like they are talking to nobody. Now, I just look like I’m having an important conversation. In fact, I am, especially when I shut up.)

So, I was in the car and I was warring as I too often do with things in the distance. Shadows, possibilities, next steps. I was planning, wondering, and worrying–like I was holding a bunch of eggs and walking on a lake of ice.

And then I said, “No, this just won’t work. I see I’m holding too tightly. I think I have to go all in. I have to have faith. I have to put all my eggs in one basket. Your basket.”

And a song sung by Ella Fitzgerald came to mind. I’ve embedded the audio so you can hear it after you finish.

Then I simply burst into tears, because that’s what a godly and good legacy looks like. Literally, one leaves words to live by. Dave’s words of life and hope and faith were ringing true in my mind in everyday life, even after he’s gone. And I thought, “That’s an amazing man and I was given an amazing gift to know him.” I kept having to wipe away tears for awhile.

 

 

Spirit, you know, is “breath of life”. (The Hebrew and Greek words for breath carry this meaning.) God is Spirit. When you see goodness, when you see sacrificial love, when you see wrongs being made right, you see God. You see the Spirit of the unseen God. Those describers are just part of what and who is impossible to confine or describe fully.

God isn’t just Life Force, but God is that too. And I don’t think Dave lost his own spirit or the Spirit. I think God became greater. The Spirit got so great that it filled him, and his body of water and carbon gave out, finally. It birthed something new and better and unseen and lasting.

And this Spirit and the part of Dave that is Dave (his truest self–his soul) joined up in union with the Great Spirit, somewhere and everywhere, the One, True, Living God who defies reason, explanation, and the limits of us, and even of the universe.

But, Dave didn’t completely leave us. But, my does the sting smart, right now! From my experience I know it dulls in time; but the pain is, at first, ultimate.

Yet, the fragrance of his spirit remains. And it is sweet.

It’s around us when we remember him. The Spirit remains, and Dave’s flavor fused with that true Spirit carries on with us. We miss the more familiar everyday interaction with him so dearly, and always will, until the same happens to us and we are joined somehow together again.

To those who grieve him: his family and friends, I join you in your deep and powerful sorrow. I join you in your joy–that is bitter and sweet–that realizes the gift he was–having known him, been enriched by him, and been intimately connected to him. Your loss is not small.

May you feel the comfort, presence, shalom, and holy goodness of the Spirit of God.

Amen.

 

-Lisa

P.S.
Here is a brief local obituary posting of David A. Dorsey.

 

With these links you can enjoy two of his most well-known books:

 



(egg photo is a Creative Commons image.)

27 Things to Talk About At Thanksgiving Dinner

feast

There’s no place like home for the holidays…

It can be fun, it can be World War III, or something in-between…but there’s no place like it!

I checked around and found out some people are counting on one thing to get them through Thanksgiving this year.

• Food? No.

• Gratefulness? No.

• Football? No.

• Shopping? No.

What then?
Booze.

That’s right, the medicine that’s kept family feasting bearable since the dawn of time. Even cave-dwellers were digging up their stashes of mead before gathering with the clan around the family fire pit and feasting on wooly mammoth, or what-have-you.

Some families don’t drink alcohol, of course. This is no time for hair-splitting. You’ve come here for help. Scroll down for the resource!

For introverts holiday gatherings can be tedious, but it’s more than that. It seems that most of us are less used to conversing face-to-face. It’s a lost art. We get itchy so soon now to numb out or escape on smartphones, tv, and the computer and then time for connection is wasted. Or, the discomfort of connecting (or misconnecting) has us looking for the exits. I’ve been there!

Here’s the truth: When extended families get together there’s usually baggage, off-limit topics, old wounds, jealousies, and enough backstory to create torrents of anxiety. That’s the side of the holidays that doesn’t make it to the commercials.

No, it’s not always like this.
Sometimes it’s just family fun and favorite foods, and good times from start to finish, but that isn’t really the way things go typically. At the very least there’s the stress of the adding obligations and scheduling everything will wind things up.

Here’s some help!
Rather than zone out or make guests uncomfortable, which is also time-tested family tradition in many homes too, try these conversation starters as you feast and holiday! Recycle them for other days if you had fun with it, or think of some of your own. Don’t put pressure on anyone to play, but use this quick download as an excuse to to try something different.  It really doesn’t take much to upgrade your holiday.

You might want to implement a 2 hour technology fast. This seems like a great idea…then you do it and 20 minutes later your nerves start to fry. (That’s what I mean about a lost art!) This can help with that.

Feel free to view, download or print the file below.

Other tips:
• You might want to place a printed question under each plate, or into a hat to draw from. Feel free to have duplicate questions circulating too.

• A person can answer the question that they get or they can swap with a previous question (your house rules can be different–just have fun with it. The point is to have fun).

• Remember keep the whole thing chilled out and enjoyable.

Not sure how to start?

Just say, “Hey, everyone, I thought this year instead of just asking everyone what they are thankful for, I thought we could play a game while we eat!

• If it doesn’t work out, just blame the game. Easy-peasy.

Click here to read, download, and print.
(It’s also a good way to get your kids involved and keep them busy.)

27 Things to talk about:
THANKSGIVING FEAST – TABLE TALK “GAME”

(FILE) Tabletalkgame DOCUMENT

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I’d love to hear how things went.

Let me know! and stop back to hear the audio podcast released twice per week.

Know someone who might need some holiday help?
Please share !